


(one kiss) it all comes down to this

by PanBoleyn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fairy Tale Curses, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Quentin Coldwater Lives, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 03:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21421336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: Eliot gets hit with a curse right out of Disney's collection, and when Quentin is the one to break the spell, the two of them have a long overdue conversation.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 30
Kudos: 311





	(one kiss) it all comes down to this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OfTheDirewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfTheDirewolves/gifts).

> Happy belated birthday, Maii! Scorpios born in the same week must stick together! ;)
> 
> No major warnings for this, but there is some discussion of Quentin's mental state at the end of s4 and the Seam being an unsuccessful suicide attempt, as well as the Monster's general creepiness.

“You know, this is the kind of shit I thought would happen in Fillory, not here,” Margo says, and she sounds ready to kill someone. Like the renegade Librarian responsible for this mess, except she already did that. “Seriously, True Love’s goddamned Kiss, what is this shit, Disney?”

“Brothers Grimm maybe, or the older versions,” Quentin murmurs distractedly, but most of his attention is on the bed. Or, rather, Eliot, who is unconscious on the bed. If this were less serious, he’s pretty sure both he and Margo would find ways to tease Eliot eventually for being hit by a Sleeping Beauty curse of all things, but - well. It’s a lot less funny when he’s never going to wake up unless, as Margo said, they can pull off a True Love’s Kiss scenario. 

There’s just one problem, as Alice explains to them twenty minutes later after Margo has spent ten of those minutes throwing things. “Why didn’t it work?!” Margo demands when Alice walks in, a book in her hands and a grim look on her face. “He’s the most important person in my life, why the fuck isn’t that true love?” 

Quentin doesn’t say anything when Alice looks his way, and he can’t meet her eyes either. Their very short-lived rekindling had foundered on, among other things, his nearly-successful suicide attempt at the Seam and the fact that while he does still love her, he’s not  _ in  _ love with her, and she isn’t really in love with him either. Both of them had just gotten caught up in the idea that the only way to care was to date, but they’ve realized otherwise now. They had also sort of… circled the topic of just who Quentin might be in love with now, which is why he’s now avoiding her eyes. 

He hadn’t said anything when Margo kissed Eliot either, because, well. He’d mostly just been hoping Margo’s kiss would work. 

“Because these spells are usually really, really particular. In this case, it needs to be romantic love,” Alice explains, setting down the book she’d brought and opening it up to a marked page. “Here, look,” she says, pointing out a block of text to Margo. Quentin stays where he is, looking at his left hand where the emptiness of no longer wearing a ring on his ring finger is suddenly driving him mad. 

“OK, so, El’s made people fall for him, so there’s gotta be -” Margo begins, but stops talking when Alice shakes her head. 

“True love is mutual, at least in this case,” Alice says. “It has to be someone who loves him, and who he loves back.” 

_ Well, we have half of that equation, _ Quentin thinks as Margo goes off on another rant and he finds himself outside on the balcony without really remembering how he got there. He leans on the rail, looking down at the people below, thinking of clove cigarettes and gold-hazel eyes, of peaches and plums.

“Fuck,” he hears Margo say through the open door. “But Eliot isn’t - he hasn’t -” Her eyes are too wide and too wet, and she turns on her heel and storms out of the living room. The last thing Quentin and Alice hear is Margo’s door slamming, and then a silence so thick it’s obvious that Margo cast a silencing spell. No surprise. The only one who’s allowed to witness Margo crying is Eliot. 

Quentin comes back inside and sinks into the couch, pressing the heels of his hands against his closed eyes and trying to ignore an awful sense of deja vu. First the Monster, now this. “There’s gotta be some kind of… curse-breaker spell, doesn’t there?” he asks Alice, not lowering his hands. “I mean, the Library - it’s gotta have -” 

He hears Alice sigh. “It’s not Harry Potter, Q. I mean, possibly, and of course I’m going to make sure it’s thoroughly looked into, but….” 

“But the chances aren’t good,” Quentin finishes, voice hollow. 

“I’m sorry, but they’re not. Q, you - did you try?” Alice isn’t looking at him either, why is this such an awkward mess? Shouldn’t emergencies mean the fumbling uncomfortable drama shit falls by the wayside? Only it doesn’t, it never does, and Quentin knows this by now. It’s just one more aspect of all this that he’s tired of.

“It has to be mutual, you said,” Quentin points out. “So, no, I didn’t.” _ I love you, but you have to know that that’s not me, and it’s definitely not you. Not when we have a choice. _ “Unless you think that, um. It’s enough for the romantic part of it to be one-sided.”

Alice shrugs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “The translation definitely says mutual love, and it makes more sense to mean mutually romantic, but I guess it’s possible. It’s in a dialect I’m not as familiar with so I could have made a mistake.” 

“But you’re pretty sure you didn’t.” 

“I’m almost completely certain I didn’t.” 

“Well,” Quentin says. “Fuck.” And that little voice, the one that was made manifest by the Abyss key, the one that almost finally won in a spill of golden sparks in a world of grey, it whispers _ this is your fault, if you were better he’d love you back and you could save him now. _ But Quentin is used to that voice, he’s so very used to it. And he’s used to ignoring it, most of the time.

Alice leaves to go check into other options, and Quentin goes back outside again, chain-smoking as the sun goes down. He really shouldn’t do that. He toys with the idea of calling Julia - shouldn’t one plus of having a friend who’s a demigoddess be that she can help fix the unfixable? Only he knows it doesn’t work like that, magic never works like that whether it’s mortal, divine, or something in between. 

Maybe they should look up angels? They haven’t tried that kind of magic yet. Or maybe not, actually, he can’t see that ending well for anyone. 

Someone drops a blanket on him - luckily, he’s just put out a cigarette and hasn’t lit another, because it’s starting to get cold and he’d been considering going inside. Quentin looks up to see Margo, just as she settles in the other chair. Curls up in it actually, more like him than her usual self, wrapped in her long dark pink coat. “I couldn’t sit there with him,” she says, staring out at the city lights instead of looking at him. “Not - when there’s nothing I can do. I called Kady, she said she’d talk to the hedges she’s meeting with, and 23 said he’ll look through the Brakebills library, I’m going to meet up with him tomorrow so we can go do that. I wanted to go now but he claims if he leaves whatever the fuck he’s doing in Seattle that suddenly we’ll have a hedge coven out for our blood. Where’d Alice go?” 

“She said she’s going to see if there’s… some kind of curse-breaking spell that could work,” Quentin says, tilting his head back. There are no visible stars in a New York City night sky, of course. Not in Manhattan anyway. But he remembers a Fillorian sky, and if that hurts too much, he remembers the night sky over Brakebills too. Although, given that he remembers Eliot sitting next to him that night he laid on the grass to stare up at those stars, maybe they both hurt too much just now. “Do you - I guess it hardly matters now, but do you know why Eliot’s barely talked to me since you came back from helping Fen stop that… what was it?” 

“Dark King,” Margo says. “And no, I don’t. When he first woke up after the Monster, he kept asking for you, said he needed to tell you something. Once he was coherent I had to tell him you’d gone and ended up in a coma. He… did not take that well, but by the time you were awake… He said he didn’t think it was appropriate to tell you whatever it was anymore.”

That definitely sounds like Quentin did something, but it doesn’t tell him what. Still, he doesn’t ask, because what would be the point. “Alice will find something,” he says, remembering how once he’d had faith that Alice Quinn could do absolutely anything she set herself to. Actually, one of the nicer things about finally settling what he and she are to each other is that he trusts her enough to believe that again. 

The trouble is, the thing Alice finds might just be proof that there really is only one way to break that fucking spell. Believing in a person doesn’t necessarily mean believing they’ll always have good answers, just answers. He hadn’t been wrong, months and an almost-death ago, to say that the expectations he used to hold were stupid. 

Case in point. Long ago, before Fillory and actually kind of after - because what is fantasy but a more complicated fairy tale? - Quentin liked fairy tales. He’d had a huge book full of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Not just the famous ones, though he’s pretty sure the book wasn’t big enough to have all of them. And even though they could be unnerving he’d loved them, had wanted to live in them because they were worlds where he thought he knew the rules.

But aren’t they in a fairy tale just now? Sure, the person cursed is a former king and not a princess, but if you really think about it, the High King chosen by the Leo Blade is the one cursed, and the three monarchs he picked to rule with him - not that it worked out that way - are the ones trying to figure out how to save him. The Grimms would have done something clever with all this. Quentin thinks he still has that book somewhere; if he does, maybe he’ll use the firestarting spell Eliot likes so much and fucking torch it. 

The Grimms would have been clever and then Disney might have made it all soft, and also so painfully heterosexual that Eliot would be actively offended and probably hex whoever wrote the script, but that’s neither here nor there, is it. 

Quentin lights another cigarette when Margo says nothing, watching the smoke curl upwards against the dark sky and thinks of a night he did the same thing. A night when magic was turned off, Quentin laying on concrete and thinking of how he first saw Eliot lying on the Brakebills sign almost exactly the same way, a cigarette in his hand with smoke curling up almost invisible in the bright sunlight. 

He drifts off at some point under the sky with its hidden stars, a cigarette burning softly to ash in the ashtray. He dreams as ever of impossible things, and wakes in the grey light washing to pink of early dawn. Margo went in at some point, Quentin thinks vaguely that maybe he should be annoyed that she didn’t wake him. But he really can’t be bothered to care, getting up and stumbling on legs gone stiff with immobility and numb with autumn chill. 

His entire body is numb with the lingering cold of the night in spite of the blanket, and the light is soft and a little strange. Nothing feels quite real, and maybe that’s what he needed. He goes inside and walks down the hall, finding himself in Eliot’s room. Margo isn’t there -  _ “I couldn’t sit there with him. Not - when there’s nothing I can do.” _ \- and Quentin probably can’t do anything either, but Margo tried. He should try, shouldn’t he? 

What if we gave it a shot. Why the fuck not. 

“I figured I’d maybe be doing this months ago,” Quentin says into the shadows, because the window here’s on the wrong side for sunrise and so he can barely see Eliot’s face in the dimness. He didn’t turn the light on. He can only just see, but he doesn’t need the light, really. “Well, OK, no. That’s a lie. I didn’t think I’d be doing this months ago because the only surprise about me not being able to sit with you until you woke up was that I actually woke up myself, later. Is that why you won’t talk to me now?” 

Quentin could tell him how angry it makes him, ever since Eliot and Margo came back, the way Eliot won’t talk to him, will barely look at him. He could demand to know what he did wrong, because Eliot will never know he asked and that’s the only way Quentin can dare, now. Now when he still feels battered and bruised from months of no one noticing him spiral down into the fucking void. He doesn’t feel up to demanding answers yet, not from Eliot at least.

“Well. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. I’m sure I did something to deserve it, and I’m sorry. And I’m sure this isn’t going to work unless Alice fucked up the translation, but I can’t - I love you, whatever you think of me. I tried to make it go away, it’s not going away. So I’m going to try this, because it can’t make things worse.”

Quentin moves closer on legs that still aren’t steady, sitting on the edge of the bed. There’s a loose curl falling over Eliot’s closed eyes, and his fingers itch to brush it back, but no. This isn’t about affection he wants to give but knows is unwelcome, and it’s only about love in the sense that it won’t work without it. No one else is awake, no one will know when it doesn’t work, and so he leans down and presses his lips to Eliot’s. 

It twists inside him, the complete lack of response, and he jerks back with his hands curled in the sleeves of his sweater. (He can’t wear hoodies anymore, he misses them, they were easier to hide in.) He holds his breath, and because he expects nothing it takes a moment for him to realize - 

Eliot groans softly, one hand coming up to rub at his eyes, and Quentin - 

He scrambles to his feet and he runs out of the room before Eliot sees who’s with him, runs to his own room and slams the door, the sound bouncing through his aching head. It worked. It worked. He slides to the floor, back pressed to the wood and he reaches up with one hand, fumbling till he finds the lock. He leans his head back against the door and closes his eyes, hears Eliot’s muffled shouting, Margo’s shocked, gleeful reply. Hearing Eliot’s voice makes him feel like he can breathe again, for the first time since that fucker’s spell left Eliot crumpled on the ground.

Someone knocks on his door. “Coldwater! Hey! The spell wore off!” Margo yells through the wood, and Quentin closes his eyes. He doesn’t answer, not even when Margo tries the doorknob and it rattles as she discovers it locked. _ I’m asleep, I’m not here, go away, _ Quentin thinks, and she does go away, because Eliot’s awake. She isn’t going to waste more time fussing about Quentin. 

The spell wore off. It’s as good a story as any, Quentin thinks. His window is better placed for sunrise, and he watches the light go pink and red before it turns to golden morning sunlight, spilling over his walls and ceiling. He should be glad, shouldn’t he? And he, he is, of course he’s glad that Eliot woke up. But, but the thing is. 

Alice probably didn’t make a mistake. And that. That means. That means Eliot lied to him, that means Eliot has been cutting him cold while all the time  _ Eliot’s been in love with him _ and what the fuck is Quentin supposed to do with that? OK, maybe Eliot loves him but also remembers how much work Quentin is to live with, and doesn’t want to deal with that.  _ “Not when we have a choice.” _ That’s understandable and all, but Quentin has not pushed things at all since that day in the throne room, he’s made it clear he’s happy to just be friends, so he doesn’t get the ignoring thing. Then again, he already didn’t get that, so he probably did something to piss Eliot off and didn’t notice. The list of options is probably just longer now. 

He’s still not warm. Sleeping outside was a terrible idea. He should move, put on thicker clothes or curl up in the bed. Sitting on the cool hardwood is probably not helping. 

He doesn’t move. 

The kiss worked. Eliot’s back. And he managed to break Quentin’s heart all over again, without even trying. So Quentin sits on the floor and watches the sunlight travel across his room, sits on the floor and can’t quite stop shivering. He wraps his arms around his knees and wishes that, now that they’ve served their purpose and woken Eliot up, he could cut out his feelings and bury them somewhere so they won’t  _ hurt  _ anymore. 

Quentin finally manages to get to his feet when the sky outside is starting to turn dark again. He curls up in bed and stares dry-eyed at the wall. He’s always cried easily, why can’t he cry now? Maybe that would be too easy, maybe he’s not allowed to let any of this go. 

Someone knocks on his door again. “Q?” Eliot calls through the wood. He sounds scared. Why? He apparently loves Quentin but his behavior makes it clear he doesn’t  _ want  _ him, so what the fuck is he scared about?

There’s a book on Quentin’s nightstand, the only solid thing he can reach. He sits up and flings it at the door. The bang it makes is bitterly satisfying. 

Then there’s only silence, until Quentin finally, finally falls asleep. And dreams, as ever, of a world where he gets to love and be loved back. Dreams of impossible things. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The last thing Eliot remembers is magic settling over him in a fog. He felt it sink into his skin, and then exhaustion had just crushed him. 

He wakes up blinking in his room, dimly aware of footsteps running down the hallway, and he sits up, head pounding. Did he get really fucking drunk last night? He’s been trying really hard not to get drunk, especially not blackout drunk, but this is him, falling off the wagon wouldn’t be the most shocking thing… Wait. No - the last thing he remembers is that Librarian, a traveler, showing up and throwing battle magic at the first person in his line of sight. 

At Quentin. 

But, no, Q’s fine, he ducked, and Eliot remembers catching the bastard up telekinetically and flinging him into a wall, remembers the guy looking at him and casting… And now he’s waking up here. What the fuck happened? He was spelled unconscious, did they just leave him to sleep it off? Nothing wrong with that, if that’s the kind of spell it was, but…

His lips are tingling. Eliot licks them, but the feeling doesn’t fade. It’s the sparkling energy a well-cast spell leaves in your fingertips, but that doesn’t make sense either. What the  _ fuck  _ happened?

He gets up, stumbling a little on unusually stiff legs, and sticks his head out of the open door just in time to hear another door slam shut. “Margo?” he calls, because her door is across from his and cracked open. A moment later Margo appears in the doorway, staring at him in wide-eyed shock. 

“Oh my God,” she says, and darts across the hall, throwing herself on him in a tight hug. Eliot catches her up more on instinct than anything else, still confused. “You - how - who kissed you?” 

“Uh… what?” Eliot says blankly. 

“Hang on a sec,” Margo says, letting him go and hurrying down the hall to knock on Quentin’s door. “Coldwater! Hey! The spell wore off!” But there’s no response, and when Margo tries the doorknob, it turns out that Quentin’s locked his door. Maybe Alice is in there with him and they don’t want to be interrupted, Eliot can’t help but think bitterly. 

Margo turns away with a frown. “Well, at least he’s off the balcony,” she says, shaking her head. “He fell asleep out there last night, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him chain-smoking like that… anyway. Come on, we both need coffee and you need answers.” 

Sitting at the kitchen island with cups of coffee, Margo explains what happened. “So that guy who attacked us was a rogue Librarian, one of Everett’s lackeys. Or a lackey of a lackey, since Alice and Zelda claim that they’ve already taken care of the bigger names who were loyal to Everett. Anyway, he was looking mostly for Alice or Kady, though you and Wicker are on their shit list too for being the people the Monster Twins were riding when they wrecked the Library. Q’s on it too, for killing Everett. So, basically, everyone but me and 23 is officially on their hit list. Go figure.” 

A faint, sly smile crosses Margo’s face. “Since you’re OK, I’m absolutely going to have to give you a little shit about the fact that you got hit with a fairy tale curse.” 

“I was hit with what?” Eliot asks, unamused. 

“Sleeping Beauty curse, El. Supposedly you needed ‘True Love’s Kiss’ to wake up, but I’m guessing that the spell wore off, since you’re awake.” 

Eliot rubs his mouth, where the tingling is starting to fade. “What, you didn’t kiss me, Bambi? I’m hurt,” he says, struggling to keep his voice light. 

Margo’s face falls, briefly. “It didn’t work. Alice said it needed to be romantic love, and it had to be mutual, and I thought you - I didn’t think -” She shakes her head. “Let’s just be glad the guy was apparently a shitty magician.” 

Eliot thinks of running footsteps, and a door slamming. A locked door. “Right,” he says, throat tight. Of course that’s all it was. That has to be all, because - well. Quentin moved on, didn’t he? Eliot had been right all along, Alice changed her mind and Quentin went right back to her, even while Eliot himself was still  _ possessed _ . 

So he finishes his coffee and doesn’t say anything else about it. The guy was just bad at curses, right? Never mind that Librarians, unfortunately, have not in Eliot’s experience ever turned out to be bad at magic. Every magician has spells they can’t really hack - usually ones from different discipline categories. Physical kids, for example, are usually pretty shit at most psychic magic. That’s all this was, a Librarian having a fumble moment. 

Except -

“That’s not possible,” Alice Quinn says when she shows up and Margo tells her the spell wore off. Because of course it’s Alice breaking Eliot’s bubble. Damn it. 

“Of course it’s possible,” Margo argues. “How else could it have broken?” 

Alice turns shifty-eyed then, pressing her lips together in a thin line. “Maybe you shouldn’t be asking someone who wasn’t here,” she says, voice clipped. “Look, I’m not saying the spell wearing off couldn’t have happened in a week or two, but not this fast. It was applied too strongly for that.” 

“Well, what the fuck…?” Margo trails off, glancing toward the balcony where Eliot notes there’s a very full ashtray. When she turns back, she says to Alice, too brightly, “So, is that why the latest breakup?” 

Alice lifts her chin. “No. And the actual reasons, or anything else we may have discussed, aren’t anyone’s business but mine and Q’s. So, if you two don’t need my help, I have to go back to work now.” She turns and walks out before either of them have a chance to respond to that, and Eliot stares into his empty mug, trying to think of absolutely nothing at all. 

“You know, part of me is seriously debating a second try at getting into her skirts, just to see what happens when she loosens up, and yet part of me still wants to yank her hair out,” Margo says contemplatively, studying the closed door. “But enough about me and the prickly nerd,” she adds, a label for Alice she hasn’t used since early in their second year when both of them had their eyes on nervy first-years, “let’s talk about you and the high-strung one. What the fuck, El?” 

“I thought he was with Alice. You’re the one who told me as much,” Eliot says, voice clipped. 

Margo shrugs. “They were back on for like five seconds? When I said that, I thought they were really giving it a try, but it turns out not really. Quentin said something about them mixing up caring with wanting to date, but you weren’t there for that because you’ve been avoiding him like the plague since we got back from Fillory.” 

“Well, I’m sorry if I haven’t been ready to deal with the guy I was going to pour my heart out to only to find out I was fucking right about him all along!” 

“What are you talking about?” Margo asks, and Eliot realizes suddenly that of course she doesn’t know. He never told her, nobody knows - 

And so he tells her. Haltingly at first, but the words coming surprisingly more easily as time goes on, Eliot tells Margo about the life she only knows a little about, from a letter Quentin made sure was left behind for her. A life she made sure they came back from, but magic, capricious as ever, also made sure they remembered. 

Then, he has to explain the throne room, and revisiting that in his Happy Place. “And I was going to tell him,” he says tightly. “But I was right. He’d already moved the fuck on.” 

“El, babe. I love you, and that’s one hell of a story. But you shot him down over a year ago, that’s… not really proof you were right. More a sign that Q didn’t want to pine forever, and I can’t blame him for trying to get over you if he thought you didn’t want him. That said, I’m pretty sure now that he kissed you awake and then went to hide in his room like a five-year-old, so I’m kinda thinking you’re both idiots right now.”

“But I told him, when I broke out…” Eliot stops. “Shit. He probably just thought I was telling him the one thing he’d have to know was me. Fuck.” That had been part of the goal, and it had all been so fresh in his mind… But he’d thought Quentin would  _ know _ . Except… He thinks of how tired Quentin had already looked that day in the park, how gaunt and pale he’d been unconscious in a hospital bed, how he still looks shadowed and thin months later. 

It occurs to him that maybe he’s expecting more deductive skill than Quentin has the energy for, right now. Damn it. 

Even having realized that, it takes Eliot until the evening to work up the nerve to knock on Quentin’s door. “Q?” he calls through the wood, tentative. Silence is his only answer until a loud bang - Eliot jumps, then realizes Quentin must have thrown something against the door.  _ That’s real fucking mature, _ he almost snaps, but decides against it. Instead he just turns on his heel and leaves, slumping back onto the couch.

Margo wakes him up at some point and bullies him into bed, and Eliot wakes up the next morning still irritated. So, when he makes his way to the kitchen to find Quentin with a bagel, coffee, and a book, he says, “Oh, not hiding today, are we?” 

Quentin looks up over the top of his book. “Oh, you’re actually admitting I exist today? First time since you got back.” 

“I’m not the one who responds to a knock by throwing something at the door.” 

“I didn’t want to talk to you.” 

Eliot pours himself coffee, because he’s going to need caffeine for this. “You broke the spell, didn’t you?” he asks, voice tight. 

“Yeah,” Quentin says, not looking at him, shoulders hunching. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a point of it, you don’t have to remind me how I’m not someone you’d choose for real.” 

Eliot’s fingers tighten on his mug. “What I said was that it wasn’t either of us when we had a choice. And I seem to recall I’m the one who woke up to find you back with Alice -” 

“You said you didn’t want me! And she did!” Quentin snaps, flinging the book aside, standing up so fast he knocks his chair over. “How dare you blame me for trying to move on?  _ You  _ told  _ me  _ no, remember! What did you think, I was going to sit and pine for the rest of my life?” 

“I told you I was alive by talking about peaches and plums and proof of concept! How the fuck did you not get that I was trying to tell you -” 

“Why would I? You as good as told me fifty years meant nothing, my feelings weren’t my feelings, how the hell was I supposed to know it was anything more than the one thing no one else but you and I know? The only thing the Monster couldn’t possibly have learned somewhere else?”

Eliot had thought that himself yesterday, but now… “You’re not that much of an idiot, Quentin.”

Quentin stares at him. “I had barely slept in months by then, since the Monster kidnapped me as Brian. I was exhausted and scared and thirty seconds before I thought you were dead and what we were about to do to banish that thing was  _ burying you again!  _ And after that, shit got worse and got worse, and you’re telling me I was supposed to figure you out? You, the king of mixed fucking messages? ‘Go be life partners with someone else’ but I’m going to cuddle you while I say that, OK, Eliot.” 

“Well, you had time to patch things up with the ex-girlfriend who screwed us all.” It’s not -  _ fair _ , to keep harping on that. Eliot knows that. Whatever Quentin and Alice rekindled, it didn’t last. But it’s the thing he’d feared most, the thing that had ensured he wouldn’t say yes to Quentin that day in the throne room. He needs to understand why Quentin did it, why he wanted to give things with Alice another try in the middle of a mess like he’s describing, when Eliot wasn’t able to fight for them. When he needed Quentin to help him. 

That… is really not fair. It’s not like Quentin stopped helping - but it’s also true that he went to the Seam with Alice instead of sitting with Margo at the infirmary for news about Eliot. And it had almost killed him. Isn’t there a sign in all that, if either of them believed in signs?

“She was the only one who looked at me,” Quentin says, righting his chair and sinking into it again. His anger’s vanished in a moment, replaced by something like defeat as he braces his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands. “You don’t know what it was like.” 

“So tell me,” Eliot says, his anger draining away as well. He sits in the other chair, suddenly aching to pull Quentin close until that awful tiredness is out of his voice, but needing answers more. 

“It… liked me. It would wrap around me like a giant evil cat and I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept it only treating me like a living teddy bear was its own lack of knowledge,” Quentin explains. “So, so there was that, and being terrified it was gonna OD or something and get you killed, or lose its temper and kill Jules or 23 or Kady, or Alice once she showed up. Or Margo if she ever came back.” 

He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “And I was in a bad place, El, OK, what happened later should have told you that. And no one… Julia didn’t notice, when Margo came back it felt like she barely looked at me, but Alice… She cared, you know? I’m not proud of it, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with you and me and everything to do with me and her, and all the shit we did to each other. So I’m not going to tell you them. But, yes, after we talked out all the ways she and I weren’t right, we did… talk _around_ you, around why I was so… focused on saving you.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Eliot asks. “I know I’ve been… unapproachable, but -” 

“You’ve barely looked at me, Eliot. The last time I saw you I was barely conscious, and since you came back you won’t look at me. I thought you were done with me, and the best I could hope for is that you’d eventually forgive whatever it was I did and be my friend again. I certainly wasn’t going to push for more when I thought I’d lost you completely.”

Eliot sighs. “I was avoiding you because I was afraid I was either going to act like a jealous asshole and yell at you about Alice, or try to seduce you away from her. And I promised I wouldn’t do that to her again.” 

Quentin lifts his head. “So, we’re both idiots. Again. What else is new.” 

That… isn’t exactly the response Eliot had been hoping for, but Quentin is watching him steadily, somewhere between wary and hopeful and -  _ oh _ . All right. He can do this. “You broke the spell,” he says again, standing up and reaching for Quentin’s hands, drawing him to his feet too. Pulling him in close so that Quentin has to tip his head up to meet Eliot’s eyes.

“I did,” Quentin says, still just -  _ watching  _ Eliot, waiting. And it had been arrogant, hadn’t it, to assume Quentin would wait forever, but right now he  _ is  _ waiting, he’s right here and they - and Eliot - 

“I hear that spell only breaks for True Love’s Kiss, which, by the way, I don’t think Margo’s ever gonna let us forget we ended up in a Disney movie.” 

“Oh, never,” Quentin agrees, and that’s the first Eliot’s seen him smile in so, so long. “Too queer for Disney though.” 

That’s a dare, Eliot realizes, given that one of the things he’d said to Quentin had been not-so-subtly implying he was too straight to be with Eliot long-term in the real world. Not his proudest moment by any stretch, even in the middle of his most repressed memory that was a particularly mean little nugget. So he nods, conceding both the comment and the dig behind it. Fair shot, after all.

“Some niche animation studio trying to make Disney-style movies with more diversity then, whatever.  _ Anyway. _ I also hear that true love, as defined by the spell, requires both people to be madly in love with each other,” Eliot says, letting go of one of Quentin’s hands to brush his bangs out of his eyes. Quentin is growing his hair out, and just now it’s at a stage where it’s always falling into his face. It’s painfully endearing, actually.

“Madly is an exaggeration, that wasn’t in the book,” Quentin corrects him, trying for serious but the amused glint in his eyes ruins it. 

“Yeah, well, neither was the color-changing dress - if I’m gonna get shit for this, might as well own it,” Eliot says. The Sleeping Beauty jokes are going to be  _ awful _ , but in this moment that’s all right. “So, when I woke up, I had a lot of things I was going to say to you. I rehearsed it, by the way. But a lot of it - a lot of it was just window dressing, just working my way up to it, and I don’t think we need that right now. So the point of it all was, I love you. I love you, I’m in love with you and I want you to be with me. If you still want that.” 

“If I still - you are a ridiculous person,” Quentin huffs, free hand catching hold of Eliot’s tie. “I never stopped wanting it, El. I never stopped being in love with you. Trying to put it away in the back of my head and carry on was what I thought I had to do, but it never stopped.”

He pulls Eliot down by the tie, into a kiss made messy by desperation, and that’s just - Eliot curls hs hand round the back of Quentin’s neck, gentles him a little until they’re kissing slow and deep, easy instead of wild. “Hey, we’ve got time now,” he whispers against Quentin’s lips. “No need to rush now, OK?” 

“I thought you were gone again, El, I never thought it would actually  _ work _ ,” Quentin says, leaning back enough to stare up at him. “And when it did… I didn’t know what to think.”

“Like you said, that we’re both idiots,” Eliot says, pulling Quentin in close and nuzzling his hair, enjoying the warmth of being tucked together like this. “But that’s OK. You know the rules better than me, Q. Spell’s broken, we’ve had our confessions, we’re allowed to have the happily ever after part now, right?” 

“You really think this is a fairy tale?” Quentin asks, voice muffled. Eliot laughs softly, kissing his temple. 

“No. But if we’re gonna get stuck with the curses and shit, I think we should do our best to make sure we get the good parts too, don’t you?” 

“I mean. I can’t argue with the theory.” 

“Good,” Eliot says. “Then that’s what we’ll do. But you can be the damsel in distress next time. You have longer hair, maybe go up a tower?” 

Quentin leans back, a very unimpressed look on his face. “You are not climbing my hair, Eliot, even if it ever was long enough.” 

“Well, not with that attitude!” 

Quentin grumbles, but he lays his head back on Eliot’s chest, so that’s all right, really. For now, at least, everything is alright, and maybe that’s not quite happily ever after, but Eliot will take it as a first step.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


End file.
